The perfect 1970s home was just down the road

When it came time to downsize after becoming empty nesters, Jerry and Amy Salem’s home search took them far and wide. The Salems, who raised their kids in Elkins Park, looked for a new landing spot for two years and as far away as Arizona.

In the end, they planted new roots only 15 minutes away, in Huntingdon Valley.

The house they purchased in 2017 came to them by “dumb luck,” said Amy, 64, who works in quality assurance for Merck. The house was under contract by the time they came across it. They were winding down their search for the winter — a notably slower time for real estate listings and sales — when they heard the other deal fell through.

“When we walked in, we both knew it was it,” Amy said.

The couple were charmed by the 1970s home’s modern flair and original details, like the angled, double-height living room ceiling and corkscrew spiral staircase. Their interior design style, which leans eclectic with some Brutalist tendencies, would fit right in.

Both Amy and Jerry, a 63-year-old senior software developer for Comcast, came from families with an appreciation for the arts.

For Jerry, that meant growing up in a midcentury-modern Elkins Park home designed by a famous local architect filled with significant furniture and design pieces. A few of those items dot the Salems’ home now, like the Paul Evans coffee table that has pride of place in their living room and the sculptural wood headboard with built-in side tables that frames the primary’s king-size bed. It may — or may not — be by celebrated New Hope craftsman George Nakashima.

“Family lore has that it was ...” Jerry said, noting that Nakashima was known for not signing most of his work. “But we think it’s a knockoff,” Amy added.

Artworks by Amy’s family members, as well as by the Salems’ three adult children, bring character and warmth to the four-bedroom home. An art piece that the young Salems collaborated on, showing five of the family’s standard poodles in historical garb, is one of Jerry’s favorite items in the house.

The Salems undertook a few renovations throughout the home after purchasing it, namely updating the kitchen’s layout, cabinets, and countertops and opening a pass-through with counter stools between the kitchen and dining area.

A live-edge wood table in the kitchen and the pass-through countertop were commissioned by the Salems from a New Hope fabricator, and were inspired by the primary’s headboard. Keeping with the artistic spirit of the house, Amy nabbed the table’s legs off an artist on Etsy.

The home, which the Salems were told was built by a Drexel professor in the 1970s, used to have a small architecture drafting room, not much larger than a closet, that they converted into a powder room off a second-floor bedroom. They also updated the two downstairs bathrooms — including renovating the primary bathroom twice until they got the feeling of it just right.

As much as they love the home itself, for Amy it’s as much about the nearly half-acre property it sits on. The possibilities of the landscape surrounding the house excite the amateur gardener. There was also room for a pool, something the Salems enjoyed at their Elkins Park home, and added to their backyard in 2022.

“That was some excitement for the neighborhood when that came down the road,” Amy joked of the fiberglass pool shell.

Making way for the pool and making the best use of the deck that already existed in the backyard required removing some large, mature trees, but Amy said she has planted as much as she has taken out.

Skip laurels she added around the backyard grow as tall as 10 feet in the summer, providing privacy for the family, she said. She’s excited for winter to end, if only to get her hands in the dirt again.

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